Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Home Sweet Trailer

It has recently come to my attention that I am white trash. I have tried extremely hard to compartmentalize the various actions that have led me to this self assessment and explain each away, but the preponderance of the evidence – taken both individually and in summary – leave room for no other finding. You be the judge:

1)I have a television in my garage. On most Sundays, my neighbors and I can be found sitting on patio furniture there, watching football and drinking beer. Yes, I use the garage for more conventional purposes, like storage of old boxes and ladders and a minivan. But I also use it as an entertainment center. I have hung an old dartboard and some sports posters and a basketball jersey from my alma mater, The Fresno State University. It’s at once a thrilling oasis and a source of catastrophic embarrassment for my family. The only things that could make it a more euphoric white trash haven are a nudie girl calendar and a bug zapper.

2) I have trash on the side of my house. Two weeks ago, Hot Wife got a wild hair and decided it was time for us to clean out the storage shed. Everything she decreed to be trash – and it should come as no surprise that most of it was my old stuff – was set aside for me to discard. There were too many boxes to fit in our trash can, so I set some aside to be cut down at a later date. That date, unfortunately, has not yet come. So the boxes sit there collecting rain water and making my sideyard look like the set of Sanford & Son. Maybe that’s why Hot Wife has been referring to me lately as “ya big dummy.”

3) Most of the sprinkler heads in my yard are broken, thereby rendering my lawn a brown mass of parched weeds and earth. I was not born with the handiness gene, as evidenced by the fact that I didn’t know what a crescent wrench was until my son got one in his toy tool chest. Given the facts that a) I don’t know jack squat about home improvement and b) Schneider from One Day At A Time doesn’t live in my house, a lot of the maintenance chores go undone. I pay a gardener to come and mow my lawn/dirt patch every Thursday and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that he will fix the sprinkler heads he dismembers with his mower. But he’s clearly too busy flicking Marlboro butts into the gutter to worry about insignificant little things like a gusher that floods my neighborhood. Remind me to fire his punk ass.

4) I sometimes let my daughter run around wearing just a diaper. I know this to be the cardinal sin of middle-class parenthood because more than one of my neighbors has called Child Protective Services on me. They see my cute little girl bopping down the street with one of the Velcro straps on her Huggies unfastened and they automatically assume I’m spending her wardrobe allowance on Schlitz and Twinkies. What is it with people? Can’t the child show some independence? Anyone who has ever tried to put one-piece pajamas on an infant knows it’s like trying to stuff a squirming, pissed-off anaconda into a Zip-Lock sandwich bag. By letting her run around in a diaper, I’m saving my own sanity and helping her to get a nice base tan for next summer.

5) We own two cars and both of them are missing external parts. Thanks to a minor fender-bender for which I was completely at fault, my Honda CR-V is currently sans its front license plate and the Honda “H” ornament that once sat proudly on the front of the grill. And our minivan is missing the plastic “Mazda” from its hatchback door because of a run-in Hot Wife had with our garage door opener. Normal people have these kinds of cosmetic issues corrected, either with some good glue or a trip to the dealership. White Trash people do not. I rest my case.

I could go on, but I won’t. Besides, I hurt my finger falling out of the trailer this morning and typing makes it hurt.

i don't think having a tv in your garage in california is so bad. if i had a tv in my garage, that would be something worth commenting on. you'd freeze yer nuts off watching tv in my garage for half the year.

i used to drag a tv into the back yard so i could watch wimbledon outside. what does that make me? confused white trash?

saw on the news today that there's some right dandy weather in SoCal. anywhere near you? hoping not but if so, stay dry and safe.

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Here are actual questions you asked the presidential candidates when they appeared on your show. To Bush: 'Were y'all spankers?" To Kerry: "Did you ever spank the girls?" To Bush: "Did you spank them?" To Kerry: "What did she do to get spanked?" Hey, Dr. Phil, keep it in your pleated pants. [GQ Magazine, Dec. 2004, pg. 372]